Preparing- which box to shift to Day 5?

[Rachel]

I need to shift some of the work from Preparing to a 5th day, and my son prefers to do the history project over time rather than all at once. That seems to leave the rotating box (vocab,research, geog., timeline) as a good fit for doing all in one day. It looks like more "fun" activities for a Friday, and not so heavy as trying to cover a lot of reading and especially writing (my ds balks at writing!) all at once. Will this work? It looks like some of the box relates directly to what he's learning that day, but since this will be AFTER he's already studied it all, he'll probably remember it still since he loves history. Only problem might be doing vocab. at the end of the unit, but I could probably review those words with him the next week a bit too. Or should we do vocab. on the scheduled day, and the rest on Day 5?
P.S. I haven't started the school year yet, so this is just guesswork.

[my3sons]

Oh dear, this is hard to answer! What is your purpose for shifting work to Day 5? Do you need to gain 'x' amount of time in your day? I think I could answer better if I knew the why behind the need. Thanks!

In Christ,
Julie

[mom23]

Your idea sounds interesting to me...I've not thought of shifting the rotating box all to Fridays, but the thing that would appeal to me is that there would still be variety in their day. If you were trying to shift other boxes it seems it would really be counter-productive because they would start to zone out pretty soon and not be learning anything.

When I've needed to carry some work over to Friday it was because the other days just got to be too long (we're still toward the beginning of the guide, though, and I'm hoping that as we go along this won't be an issue!) Anyway, the way I've done it is just to set our school day at a certain length of time and hit every box that we could. Whatever we didn't get to from Day 1 was done at the beginning of Tuesday before we went on to Day 2's boxes. This way, we ended up carrying over a bit each day into the next and so Friday's were just finishing up Day 4's work.

[Rachel]

Thanks for sharing your experience. I guess I can just do that- carry over the "leftovers" each day until the next and finish on Day 5. The reason I'm asking this is that I can't homeschool like usual this year. I am a missionary, and part of my ministry is offering up my schoolroom as a co-op if other moms need help or want to work together. My ds is older than the others and will not be sharing his Preparing class with anyone else, but my time will also be taken up with my dd as well as teaching some group classes (from Beyond book) to younger children (although I will schedule in specific times to work with my ds too). That forces us into more of a scheduled day than usual. So it would be nice to know how much he could accomplish in one day, and what exactly he would need help with on the 5th day (which we aren't free to just make into a field trip day). He will definitely need to fit in some foreign language classes throughout the week, and then will also need something to do on Fridays so he isn't sitting around bored when the younger children are working on their normal schedule. He will help me lead the Beyond craft on that day, as well as do some mental math/games and a bit of spelling. But otherwise I need to know how to shift his work so I know he can fit in the extra class and then still have work left to do on Friday.
Kind of confusing, but it's what has to be this year!

[netpea]

Anyway, the way I've done it is just to set our school day at a certain length of time and hit every box that we could. Whatever we didn't get to from Day 1 was done at the beginning of Tuesday before we went on to Day 2's boxes. This way, we ended up carrying over a bit each day into the next and so Friday's were just finishing up Day 4's work.

This is how we do our work. We don't always get a day done because life happens. We start each day finishing up anything from the day before that didn't get done, then move into that day's lessons. Sometimes we do a unit in 4 days, sometimes 5 or 6 depending on what is going on. We usually start school 2 weeks before the PS kids so that we have time built in to account for those units that take longer.

[my3sons]

Oh, thanks so much for explaining that! The ladies have given a good option already for this purpose, so definitely give that some thought. One other option I thought of was to just move some of the "Learning the Basics" things to Friday. This would not mess up the "theme" of the day for history then on your Mondays through Thursdays. For example, you might shift to Day 5 one DITHOR and R & S English day, one math day, one poetry day, and one science day (if you did science, you'd probably want to shift Day 4's science to Day 5 on Friday, since they loosely correlate with the history). So, your Day 5 would include DITHOR/R & S English, math, poetry, and science. So there's one more option to consider! HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

[frankesense]

At our house, we've moved the Rotating Box to Day 5 and that has worked well for us. We haven't had an issue about either child not remembering something or forgetting how it ties in to what we've learned. We also do our history project on Day 5.

Stephanie

[Rachel]

Thanks a lot, ladies! I appreciate the advice. It might try it one way for a week or so, then if that doesn't work, I can try it another way.
My son is looking forward to this program.